Short answer: yes! In today’s rapidly changing business environment, the MBA is more relevant than ever before. That’s less because employers demand it – although many still do, particularly in the United States – and more about what it gives you. What makes the MBA degree stand out from other – more specialised – graduate management degrees is its versatility and adaptability.

Today, people are less likely to work for the same company for their entire professional lives. They hop, skip, and triple jump across jobs, roles, industries, and locations. An MBA provides you with the foundation of business management knowledge to set you up to work across different industries, roles, and locations. It’s a very versatile degree.

While in the past MBA classrooms were dominated by aspiring consultants and bankers, MBA graduates now work across in a variety of organisations – anything from NGOs and nonprofits to fintech startups and leading technology companies like Amazon and Google. The MBA has become a degree that really is accessible for anybody with a few years experience under their belt, a solid GMAT score, and the money to pay the tuition fees – which, increasingly, can be funded through scholarships.

There’s so many reasons why you should get an MBA. With an MBA, you become a generalist, able to adapt to the working culture and responsibilities of different companies across the world. You learn how to work with people from a variety of different personal and professional backgrounds. You learn about every aspect of business in a way that can prepare you to start up your own business too. These are things a Master in Finance or Accounting – for example – can’t give you.

Crucially, the 21st century MBA program is constantly evolving. Teaching across top-ranked MBA programs has changed in past years to focus more on the soft skills – leadership, teamwork, cross-cultural collaboration, change management – needed to handle disruption to jobs and industries caused by rapidly advancing technology. In this way, business schools are actually preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist yet.

Other management degrees have eaten into the market in recent years. GMAC’s 2017 Prospective Students Survey Report, records that the percentage of prospective students considering only business master’s programs – and not an MBA – has increased from 15% in 2009 to 23% in 2016. But the MBA is still the most popular post-graduate business degree among business school applicants – 77% of candidates surveyed by GMAC are considering an MBA compared with 49% considering a business master’s program.

Clearly, the MBA is still relevant. As a director of a respected UK MBA program once told me: ‘If you want to be an accountant your entire life, do an accountancy degree. If you want to manage teams across industries, change roles, change careers, and prepare yourself for the future, do an MBA’.